David Chiu looks on as John Avalos answers a question during the debate. The leading contenders in San Francisco's mayor race squared off at their first debate at the University of San Francisco, in San Francisco, Calif., on Thursday, May 5, 2011.
Ran on: 07-03-2011
Chiu
Ran on: 07-03-2011
Chiu

Board of Supervisors President David Chiu boasts some of the strongest tech bona fides among the candidates for San Francisco mayor, in an election where industry issues and players have commanded a central role.

Before joining the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, he founded Grassroots Enterprise, a public affairs company that harnessed online tools to build support for political causes. As head of the Board of Supervisors, he has championed the use of technology to streamline communications and cut costs at City Hall.

Chiu was also one of the first movers behind the so-called Twitter tax break, granting a temporary payroll tax exemption for fast growing companies moving into the Mid-Market area.

Several big names in tech have endorsed or contributed to his campaign, including LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman and Yelp Chief Executive Jeremy Stoppleman.

Still, the big tech money appears to be lining up behind Mayor Ed Lee, the incumbent and front-runner. Prominent angel investor Ron Conway set up an independent political action committee that's free to raise unlimited amounts in support of Lee. Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff was among the early contributors.

In the interview that follows, the third in a series with mayoral candidates on tech issues, Chiu demonstrates a firm grasp of the nitty-gritty details of the city's technological infrastructure, particularly its considerable shortcomings. Unlike previous candidates, he didn't seem stumped by questions about the city's high-speed fiber Internet lines (City Attorney Dennis Herrera) and didn't refer to the Internet Explorer browser as "the Microsoft version" (Lee).

Instead, Chiu lays out clear and specific plans to transform city systems "stuck in 1999" into what he calls a "21st century government."

Q:How would you grade the city's use of technology so far?

A: How about a D-plus? There is so much of our city's technology infrastructure that is stuck in 1999, from the IBM Lotus Notes e-mail system I use at the Board of Supervisors to the seven disparate systems that 26,000 city workers use, to the close to 40 data centers that the city government has when we should have two.

These disparate systems have real life consequences.

In 2000, there was a Filipina woman, Claire Joyce Tempongko, who was killed by her ex-boyfriend. All the law enforcement agencies knew she was being beaten and each had data that, together, clearly indicated that her life was at significant risk.

In the aftermath of her death, city leaders came together and swore they'd bring together communications systems across law enforcement. It was supposed to cost a couple million dollars and take a few years. Eleven years and $23 million later, we still don't have an answer to how much it will cost or when it will be available.

Q:How would your administration better harness technology, be it social media or other tools, to more efficiently interact with citizens?

A: I want to be known as the technology mayor, on a whole slew of fronts.

There are so many social media tools we can use better. Folks should be able to walk down the street, take a picture with their cell phone of the pothole, the broken light, the graffiti and send it to a city department and get an immediate response.

I would support city-sponsored hackathons (an event in which programmers come together to tackle problems in short, intensive sessions). We can bring creative people from the technology world and other fields to come work with city staff to brainstorm solutions to the city's problems: How do you make Muni faster? How do you make buildings more green?

I've also been the advocate for licensing dark fiber (the unused high-speed Internet cables controlled by the city). We have 110 miles of fiber under our city streets and only about 10 percent of it is being used for city purposes. We should utilize the other 90 percent. There is huge demand for high-speed Internet from our schools, health care and the San Francisco public.

We have to build a 21st century government.

Q:Stats show that technology is creating the greatest number of jobs in San Francisco right now. What would you do to propel that trend?

A: I am absolutely committed to making sure that we don't become a bedroom community for Silicon Valley and that we nurture our technology industry here in San Francisco.

In recent years, we have become a city where great ideas are born. But as those ideas turn into small- and then medium-sized businesses, we lose hundreds of those companies as they travel down 101 to Silicon Valley.

There are a variety of things we need to do. One I've been championing is comprehensive business tax reform. This is why I was the lead advocate for the legislation that is keeping Twitter and other 21st century companies in the Mid-Market area.

This is why I helped pass the legislation to keep companies like Zynga, Yelp and other startups here in San Francisco by ensuring that they were not in the only city in the country where their stock options would be taxed.

Q:Every candidate I've talked to is proposing comprehensive business tax reform, but it really sounds like what we mean are tax cuts. Unless that reform asks other companies to pay more, won't all of this just ultimately lower the amount coming into the city?

A: I'll say a couple of things. Independent economic analysis around the Mid-Market payroll tax legislation showed that if we had not moved forward with that and allowed Twitter to move to Brisbane, we would have lost $500,000 in tax revenue each year.

Instead, we've kept Twitter and created a halo effect that's attracting other companies around this tech hub. It's projected to be a revenue winner.

Point two is that city economists say that there are alternatives to the current payroll tax that could allow us to slightly reduce the tax burden while stimulating the economy in such a way that you have at least the same amount of tax revenue overall.

Q:Let's go back to the dark fiber issue. I know that's an area you've looked at closely. What do you hope to accomplish there and why is that important for the city?

A: Both for revenue and the chance for the city to push ahead data speeds here, we should invest in this incredibly underutilized asset. There's an opportunity for us to provide or lease that fiber to private parties as well as to the health care and educational institutions that require high bandwidth.

We also have to make it easier for the city to expand the fiber network, to lay down more fiber and get fiber straight to homes.

Every time the city and county digs up a street to deal with other needs, we should be laying down fiber. It's incredibly cheap once you've dug up a road. But we are not taking advantage of those opportunities. There are mazes of bureaucracies and regulations in place that kill that.